Leading composers have been asked to complete a series of organ pieces by JS
Bach. Can they do him justice?

The arts give meaning to life: that’s why we need them. The problem is that the meaning contained in art-works often becomes inaccessible. It fades, very slowly, leaving behind a regretful feeling that something has gone out of reach.

We can try to bring the meaning back to life, with a bit of help from an expert. For instance, Renaissance painting is full of symbols that need interpreting. Why is the Flight to Egypt of Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus Christ often portrayed in a ruined classical landscape, with toppled pillars and shattered metopes lying about? Why is a pelican feeding its young often portrayed on old wall paintings in medieval churches? The experts tell us it’s because the infant Christ is bringing a new dispensation into the world, which destroys the old one. The pelican is a symbol of Christ because it feeds its young with its own blood, or so the medievals thought.

The second problem is how to weave this bit of scholarly knowledge into our appreciation of the picture. Knowing is one thing, feeling another. Having one doesn’t automatically produce the other. The same problems arise in classical music. It has its secrets, and the further back you go the more secrets there are. Sometimes they’re buried way under the music’s surface, like that late-medieval song which symbolises the circular quality of life by having the same melody sung by two singers, one going forwards, the other backwards. We would never know this, if a medieval music expert hadn’t spotted it in the score.

Once you’ve spotted the secret, how do you “feel” it? This is a problem even when the secret is right there on the surface. Mostly we don’t even notice its presence – though I did spot one a few months back, in the Royal Opera House. It was during a performance of Strauss’s great opera Ariadne auf Naxos, at the moment where one character referred to death. Right on cue a trombone down in the orchestral pit played a solemn phrase. Why? Because for centuries the sound of the trombone evoked the solemnity of death. You hear that deep quality of trombones in 17th century composers like Monteverdi and Schutz and Purcell. It carries on through Mozart and Beethoven, right up to Bruckner. By the time Strauss wrote his opera in 1912, the tradition was nearly dead. That little trombone phrase could be its dying echo.

This topic is on my mind because we’re now at the time of year when old nearly-vanished meanings are all around us. Think of all those Christmas carols that praise holly and the Christ-child in one breath, and all those Christmas oratorios with “celestial” trumpets and “pastoral” oboes. But who actually feels those connotations in any more?

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That question is especially acute when living composers try to engage with these old ways of feeling. One such attempt is taking place at the Spitalfields Winter Festival next month. The festival is engaged in a long-term project to finish off a series of organ pieces by JS Bach called the Orgelbuchlein (Little Organ Book). Bach’s plan was to write 164 pieces for all the major feast-days of the liturgical year, but he only completed 46.

Commissioning composers from all round the world to write 118 organ pieces is quite an undertaking. And it’s a big challenge for the composers too, because Bach’s original is full of those “secrets” I mentioned. Every one of his pieces is linked to a specific day in the church year. Bach used the old hymn-tune that was appropriate to the day, and often he embedded musical symbols in the music too, like the image of “falling” he puts into the chorale prelude about Adam’s fall from grace.

These things would have resonated instantly with the audience of Bach’s time. But these days nobody knows those tunes and their meanings, except particularly pious Lutherans. So the question arises – how can a composer write a brand-new piece that’s actually true to the spirit of Bach’s original?

My experience of hearing the pieces written so far is that some composers don’t even try. They just write the kind of music they’d write anyway, with a cursory nod towards Bach. But some composers try something much more difficult. They try to catch the meaning of the hymn and its sacred quality, without falling into Bach-pastiche. It’s a hugely difficult thing to do, but one or two have managed it. It will be interesting to hear whether any of the new pieces being unveiled next month pull off this unlikely feat.

The Orgelbuchlein Project can be heard at the Spitalfields Winter Festival on December 13 (returns only). The festival runs from December 5-16. Tickets: spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk; 020 7377 1362